Cardiac Controller
Location: Seattle, Washington Date: May 5, 1993 Story On the night of May 5, 1993, Jim Knox, a 55-year-old air traffic controller at Sea-Tac International Airport outside Seattle, Washington, sat in a darkened room with two other controllers, watching lights move across his radar screen. Ed Gass, air traffic controller supervisor on duty that night, described the scene. "Aircraft are coming in toward the radar controllers from all points of the compass," said Gass. "Their job is to position the aircraft so that, ultimately, the airplanes end up one behind the other in an orderly fashion and land one at a time. They depend on us to provide safe instructions. There's a lot of stress associated with the job." Jim had responsibility for all aircraft approaching from the west. Dick Bobb, the traffic manager on duty and one of Jim's oldest friends, noticed--as he made his tour of the room, checking with the controllers to see if anyone needed help--that Jim was slumped forward with his head resting on his control board. Just a short while before, he had stopped at Jim's console to tease him amiably about his impending retirement. "Jim's like a brother to me," he said. "We've known each other a long time--18 years. Our kids grew up together--we're damn good friends!" "Traffic that slow, Jimmy?" Dick quipped, hoping that his friend was just playing a practical joke, pretending to be asleep. To his alarm, Jim did not respond. "Jimmy, can you hear me?" he shouted. Still, there was no response. Sue Hoover, one of the other controllers on duty, recognized the gravity of the situation, but could not immediately leave her console to help. "Jimmy was definitely in distress, but you couldn't stop what you were doing--there were too many people up there," she said, referring to the planes and pilots depending on her for direction and instruction. Supervisor Ed Gass came over to Jim, lifted his head, and realized that he was unconscious. Gass instructed Mike Callahan, the third controller on duty, to pull in Jim's radar frequency to his equipment and take over the planes Jim should have been handling. He told Dick Bobb, "Call 911. I think Jimmy's had a heart attack," and carefully laid Jim on the floor, face up, on his back. Does anybody know CPR?" another controller who had come into the room asked. "I do," Sue Hoover responded, "but it's been a while." The other controller took over for Sue, who went to join Ed to administer two-person CPR to their stricken and unconscious colleague. Ed checked Jim for a pulse, but wasn't able to find one. "I was nervous because I wasn't sure if I remembered the numbers right--how many breaths and how many compressions," Sue said. "So I gave him a couple of breaths and then checked for a pulse. I didn't find one and then it really sank in, just what was going on--his heart was stopped." Sue then did chest compressions, trading off with Ed when she got tired. "I was concerned because Jimmy's life was literally in the hands of a couple of amateurs," Ed said. "We hoped we were doing the right thing, but we had no assurance that we were." "I would just as soon somebody else had done it, but I was the best chance he had at that point," Sue said, "so I tried. But I was really worried that what I was doing was hurting him more than helping me." In spite of her anxiety, Sue kept working on her lifeless colleague. "Come on, Jimmy, come on," she urged. Within minutes of Dick Bobb's 911 call, a Sea-Tac Airport rescue team of EMTs arrived in the control room, and took over the task of performing CPR from Ed and Sue, working in the semidarkness so that the controllers could continue to read their radar screens. The challenge, quite simply, was to save Jim's life without endangering those of the thousands of people waiting in the air to land. In the cramped space on the floor of the room, the EMTs decided to defibrillate Jim--a process in which an electrical shock is sent to the heart to enable it to resume a functional heartbeat. "I was hoping that they'd defibrillate Jim and they'd have a heartbeat," Sue said. "But it didn't work. They did it once, and then they did it again. At that point, I couldn't watch anymore." Approximately 10 minutes after Jim's heart attack, a county life-support team of paramedics arrived. "The people that I met as I entered the room asked me if we could move the patient," said the team leader, a little incredulously. "I told them that right now he was straddling the fence between life and death, and until he puts his foot down on one side or the other, we're going to have to work on him right there." The paramedics gave a drug intravenously to keep him from refibrillating (returning to a chaotic, fluttering heartbeat, after which the heart stops altogether), and defibrillated him two more times. On the second try, they were successful in getting his heart to pick up a rhythmic beat that would sustain a pulse and keep up his blood pressure on its own. From the control room, Jim was transported to Highline Community Hospital. "The scariest thing was watching them roll him out of there, and wondering if I'd ever see him again," said Dick Bobb, "wondering if I'd ever again have the Jimmy that I knew." Dick followed the ambulance to the hospital, where he was joined by Jim's wife, Jane. "She asked me how he was, and I told her that he was in the emergency room, unconscious, and that the doctors said he'd had a heart attack. She broke down. I gave her a hug and we cried together," Dick said. You're going to be all right. It will be all right," Jane soothingly told her unconscious husband. "I was terrified. Here was a man who was the strength of the family, whom we all look up to. It was just terrifying to see him down like that. If I'd lost him, I would have been..." Jane said, letting her voice trail off, unable to finish the sentence. Curtis Burnett, the cardiologist who took over Jim's care, acknowledged the importance of the work Ed Gass, Sue Hoover, the EMTs, and the paramedics had done. "In this case, we're basically in a supporting function." he said. "The work to save Jim's life happened out in the field, and we're here to do what we can to prevent the problem from recurring." Finally, someone came to tell Dick, Jane, and Ed, who had joined them in the hospital, that Jim was awake and talking. Jim ultimately had a device implanted that automatically delivers an electrical shock to his heart anytime it stops beating, and went onto enjoy his much-anticipated retirement. "I feel great," he said 5 months after the heart attack. "I don't feel any different now from before it happened." "We're very fortunate," Jane said. "The doctor told us that if he had not had the immediate CPR, he would have been either dead or brain damaged, period. We've become almost inseparable. We simply just enjoy each other's company--and he's my life." Category:1993 Category:Washington Category:Heart Attacks